#but I read a lot more than what I do fanfics for

[ruyakasunshine]

F1 drivers rated on how likely they are to know what ao3 is

note : this is just for entertainment. I will also use this to make a general reminder not to get anything fanfic/rpf related outside of sites such as tumblr, ao3, or wattpad. Enjoy!

This is just the current grid, because if I had to do it with every driver that raced this season, I'd get a surprisingly high amount of drivers to talk about.

20. Fernando

Grandpa. Need I to say more?

19. Checo

In a recent GQ Sport interview, he revealed that he didn't even have social media on his phone. I'd be surprised to hear he has any ao3 tab open up there.

18. K-mag

I don't feel like I need to explain this one. But I also believe that if Haas got him to read a chapter of a wattpad fanfic out loud where he has to replace Y/N with his own name after every penalty point he gets, he would have stopped causing so much ruckus. Or he might even cause more, who knows what goes on inside his mind.

17. Nico Hulk

Hear me out, he doesn't know what a fanfic is, but if he were more popular with the writer, he'd read the shit out of those.

16. Valterri

I could pay actual money to hear him read a 'kidnapped by one direction' self insert story out loud. If there is any Sauber intern lurking here, please consider. Wattpad as a sponsor would bring you a lot of money, think about it. I promise you will see a rise in your fandom if the name of the team was "wattpad kick sauber". I would buy merch. You need the money the way the constructors are going. Think about it.

15. Lance

I don't know too much about him, but I will assume he doesn't spend too much time on social media, or googling himself with all the hate he gets. But maybe if he were to read a strollonso fanfic, we might get to see him have actual expressions on his face. Granted, that would be a look of horror, but I will take what I can.

14. Carlos

I think he might combust if he read any ABO fanfic. I might want to see that.

13. Max

He is too busy sim racing to care. Good for him, I wish I could say the same about myself but alas I am too busy reading the same fanfic for the 23th time.

12. Yuki

I believe if you pronounced the term "Y/N" next to him he might assume that's a car brand. Or, like, hello in a foreign language. Again, good for him.

11. Zhou

Hear me out, fanfics seem to be quite popular in China, and he has a sister, there is no way he hasn't heard of the existences of it. I don't think he has read any though, which is for the better.

10. Franco

Our dear Franquito hasn't been on the grid for long enough to discover the amazing word that fanfics have to offer, but let me tell you that if he hasn't found out stuff yet, he'll find some soon enough. Let the writers have time to write a little bit more about him, and soon we'll get an instagram live of him reacting to those.

9. Liam

I think he is young enough to have googled himself (he had to find something to do since he's been a reserve driver since like the year 2010), but he also hasn't been a permanent member, so he might not have enough material to accidentally stumble upon.

8. Esteban

He googles himself. He knows there are fanfics. And he fucking likes that. If there is a rise of pierresteban fics on ao3 after Brazil 2024, he will be the first one to know let me tell you that much.

7. Lewis

Okay you might be wondering why this senior citizen is up here, and the answer is simple : he is too famous not to know. Like COME ON. He's been here since 2007 (which is longer than some people who'll see this post have been alive for— that's a scary thought for another day), he has been in famous and televised rivalry, and he has to live with the existence of the quote "everything but a lover" about nico and him.

There is no way he hasn't READ a fucking brocedes fanfic. If he is willing, I will teach him how to use ao3 so he can look-up some "fix-it" fics. He might use some inspiration, and who is better for that than tired college students writing about their sad ass in between lectures?

6. George

He seems like the type to lurk a lot around the internet, so the chances of him finding the link to a fic on the third page of google isn't impossible to me.

If you find any comment of someone correcting your spelling, you know who did it.

5. Pierre

He probably googles his name too often not to have stumbled upon a "Reader x Pierre Gasly" wattpad fanfic. sigh.

4. Alex

Alex, I know that you are the second most likely to have tumblr (right after george who actually has an account). The chances of you knowing what a "lemon" is is way too high for my liking.

3. Charles

The C in Charles stands for Chronically Online. My boy was known for liking tweets about himself, and we know that fans talk about fanfics on twitter. He clicked on a link of a lestappen or sebchal fanfic at least once out of curiosity let me tell you this much.

2. Lando

Too chronically online not to have read fanfics about himself. I just know he typed in "lando norris fanfiction" straight in google at least once. Jail.

1. Oscar

Here me out : his sister is a K-pop fan. If you believe that she never yapped about a fanfic she read to her brother, you are strongly unfamiliar with sibling relationships. But the chances of him not listening to her are also very high, so maybe he shouldn't be so high up my list. But oh well.

He is also good at hiding his game, but he is as online as Charles (you thought you were sneaky but we caught you clicking on that link of Max playing air-hocket dear Osc.)

For my own mental health though, I will assume he hasn't read about his own self yet.

[aestheticreservoire]

Not the person you are addressing but I feel like theres more to be said I don’t see in the replies to the post and that I think adds context to fan fiction and fandom in general especially after reading other women talk about the generalisation stuff in the OP

- a lot of women start reading fic as teenagers and a lot of current fic readers and writers are per se autistic and obsessed with whatever media they’re writing about ergo why they make stories about it obsessively. This is not a new phenomenon, women wrote Sherlock and Watson fan fiction back then with the books and the first mainstream fandom as we understand it today was Star Trek: the original series in the 70s. At that point it was in fact a sort of revolutionary separatist space as a lot of the people writing, and publishing, fanzines were female. Fanfic continues to be female skewed in fact. Males were also Star Trek fans it’s the derivative writing space that was and continues to be overwhelmingly female.

You probably dont care but if you want data points I started at age 13.

- I personally haven’t disengaged entirely but I know a lot of people do (and I took distance) because of the current heavy control exerted community wise due to the increasing politicisation of fandom after the 2000s onward. This is nothing new, again, a lot of the fujos who shipped Kirk and Spock in the 70s legit used that as leverage to support gay rights, it’s just that by virtue of members being younger and more immature and the insanity that was cultivated since livejournal, into here, and onward to twitter and TikTok fandom has become like a pug inbred version of itself.

- because the girls writing this are straight. It’s the same mindset of fujoshi writing doujinshi in Japan. Two attractive men kissing and thinking about romance without all the implications of being a woman and your lesser place in society because of it. And of course a lot of the media they obsess with glorifying and exhalting men while making mediocre or irrelevant female characters. Female essayists were actually writing about this in the Star Trek days too.

-No, not really. As I said a lot of women into this are already autistic or otherwise “weird” personality wise and that usually carries its own batch of associated mental illness, some thru nature some thru nurture (bullying, exclusion causing depression and anxiety) there’s actually an analysis of how this impacts geeks in general, socially, called the Geek Social Fallacies and you will see them repeat in ambiances like liberal feminism and activist teenagers on tiktok: https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ which boils down to, I was excluded and left behind, ergo I vow when I meet other nerds I will never leave anyone behind because everyone who leaves me behind are evil bullies who hate me just because I like media.

This is also why I believe so many fandom spaces are social justice oriented. They too see minorities being excluded that they have to defend no matter the cost which is why analysis is so black and white, un-nuanced, and generally ignorant of whatever minority is being defended. Which I've personally experienced being latin american in the anglo fandom internet. In the end, I think I agree with a lot of other people that women are criticised a lot more for these fandom things than men are for things that are far more harmful, especially considering the history of these places as women-led hobbies that permitted a space separate from men. However I also agree it is a hobby and a lot of it is self-indulgent slop, and you should go in with that mindset. The cult mentality of hyper political fandom is also incredibly diseased and wreaks havoc on your already fragile mental state. Like any subculture it can be a wonderful thing for you to connect with people or controlling torture depending on how you engage with it. But as an autist I can't deny the catharsis of being able to do what is essentially glorified playing with fictional dolls without scorn, as that is something that you are judged for, very often unfairly- like most women's hobbies, to be honest.

I don't hate fan fiction because it's not original material or whatever. I hate fan fiction because it seems like everyone who is into it has serious mental health issues.

And I realize that it's a chicken/egg situation so there's no way to tell if being immersed in it tanks your wellbeing or if you get into it at your lowest point. What I do see is that it doesn't make you any better and definitely makes things way worse.

[germesthegenie]

Brief Respite At The End Of The World

Little doodle that I imagine takes place some time either during Arc 29 or after Arc 30. Wanted to do a quick drawing of this ship that for some reason lives rent free in my brain (Does it even have, like, a ship name? If there isn’t I think either Gauntlet or Handcuff could work for if I ever need to tag it but idk)

Way Too Much Yapping about a relationship between two tertiary characters below:

Part of the reason I like this ship is because these two were surprise favorites in the latter half of Worm, and I thought the mentions of them getting together in Arc 26 and 29 were cute. Though thinking a lot on the two characters (and probably a good bit of headcanon tbh), I started to appreciate it a lot more.

For Theo’s end of things, he’s always been burdened by expectations. His father tried to mold him into the next leader of the E88 from a young age, but Theo pushed back against that, instead wanting to be a hero. And then he got that, and a lot more than he asked for, accidentally becoming essentially a hero of prophecy thanks to Jack’s promise. Suddenly he wasn’t just a hero, he had to be *the* hero, live up to impossible expectations and save the world. And he was treated based on those expectations. His friendship with Weaver was pretty much based on the fact Taylor had to train him, try to make him the guy who could defeat Jack Slash. And then he failed, just barely missing the mark, and those expectations came crashing down around him. He distances himself from his team, and is mostly sulking in the background for the opening acts of Gold Morning, though one person does make an effort to reach out to him.

Aside from maybe Purity (who has her own set of issues), Ava is one of the few people in Theo’s life who likes and cares about who he is, not who he could be. And at his lowest point, where he feels he failed everyone, she’s trying to do what she can to help him recover and see he’s not a failure. And she does succeed eventually, as we see him up to fight a couple chapters later in the arc.

(Also it’s really funny and sweet that the meek girl from Arc 24 was able to almost convince Taylor “You can’t tell me what to do” Hebert to drop everything and talk to Golem, made a doodle of it a while back)

On Ava’s side of things, there’s admittedly not nearly as much to glean from just her characterization in the text alone. Like I said, she’s one of the few who appreciates Theo for who he is, regardless of expectations put on him by others. Their stories aren’t so different, only that her nemesis of sorts (Behemoth) was killed just as she was starting out. And after that fight she’s terrified, choosing not to attend the Khonsu fight. But Theo keeps pushing himself, trains knowing he’ll have to fight things that are arguably worse than the Endbringers when it comes to pain and fates worse than death. I like to think his inspiration is what led to the much more confident Cuff we see after the timeskip (though the Taylor Hebert Bootcamp probably also helped there). The main other thing we know is she had a previous boyfriend who she broke up with due to the pressures Weaver put the Chicago Wards under (which is probably a whole separate post to get into). So maybe their relationship is something that lets them both have a sense of normalcy in the insanity that is late Worm.

Or, you know, maybe I’m reading way too much into my two blorbos whose relationship gets like 5 lines of canon mention and 1 fanfic that I know of (shoutout again to Chartic, Off the Cuff is like a third of the reason I like this ship so much) and this is the best way I could put together why short of writing a fanfic myself (I might ngl but I do not have time atm)

[schizosamwincester]

So, November 5, in addition to being a) my birthday, b) Destiel day, c) @buncoreclown 's birthday, d) election day in America, and e) guy fawkes day, is also the fifth anniversary of my psychotic break. And just. Goddamn. Half a fucking decade.

For me, a delusion onset very, very suddenly. There were a few passing thoughts of it in the days before, but it pretty much hit all at once at about 5:35. The delusion came on really strong with instant, intense tactile hallucinations, and I started dissociating and never completeness stopped until I started T not even a month ago.

Schizophrenia is neurodevelopmental, so in a lot of ways I've been schizophrenic my whole life. I very much have always had the schizophrenic thought patterns. My brain has always grabbed onto ideas too hard, my thoughts have always been scattered, I've always been rambly, I've always been obsessive. That said, there's a huge difference between that latent schizophrenia and me being actively schizophrenic. All of those symptoms got worse in the after. And tomorrow marks 5 years of living as an honest-to-god schizophrenic.

Despite how much worse my symptoms are now than they were before, it's so much better to be living in the after because now I understand that none of it is normal and can deal with it and be gentle to myself about it. I'm not just incapable of getting my shit together—I deal with an actual thing called disorganized thinking that makes it incredibly difficult to keep a train of thought a lot of the time. I'm not just stubborn—I have actual delusions, so it is really hard to let go of ideas. And I don't just "babble," as my mother would say—rambling and tangents are how my brain works and I shouldn't have to stop that just because it isn't normal. Lots of people love hearing my long-ass rants.

But that's not really what I'm thinking about today. I'm just thinking about how despite the fact that November 5, 2019 still defines me and every facet of my current life was caused by what happened that day, it is now 5 years later. I've spent 5 years in the after. I've spent more time being "recovered" than I ever did in active psychosis. And it is just strange that something that happened a half-decade ago when I was still in high school is still so definitive. I have been living on my own for a year. I've been working as a CNA for 2 and a half years. My life is nothing like it was when I was a high schooler in my parents house (well, except for the fact that I still write and read too much fanfic), but I do still think about that event not necessarily daily, but at least weekly.

Five years is a long time, and I'm very glad to be alive and, despite everything, coping with it all extraordinarily well. Don't get me wrong. I'm still definitely disabled. I've got my life set up very carefully to work around my limitations, and I'm also just really lucky to have found about the one affordable apartment in walking distance from everything important in all of America (schizophrenia is why I don't drive). But still, like... I've made it to 5 fucking years out. Just being alive and functional by then was almost incomprehensible to me by like, November 8, 2019.

Five goddamn years. Given how hard it is and how much I just take everything one day and one week at a time, it is so weird to step back and realize I've been living with schizophrenia for that long.

Okay. That's all. Back to my regularly scheduled fandom bullshit.

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[darkestmetamorphosis]

I definitely feel like what sites it's on is a part of it; I always hear ao3 talked about as where you go to find good quality fics, fanfiction.net as a barely functioning site, and wattpad as... not great quality lol. And I think ao3's tagging system makes it leagues better than the others for finding things and filtering out things (I will occasionally go back to fanfiction.net to find stuff for old dead fandoms I was years late to that almost no one writes for anymore) so whatever is more popular there is going to get more exposure.

Admittedly I am not very experienced as a fanfic writer and started with original writing; I get caught up in worrying if I'm doing the characters justice in a way that I never needed to when it was only my ocs.

That and I'm writing for a game that had very minimal dialogue (between the characters I'm shipping; they were both individually in other games where they got more character development but no more interaction with each other) so writing their voices both in dialogue and in their thoughts and introspection has been difficult, for one moreso than the other.

I haven't written fic for (or read much of) a lot of fandoms of first person pov books so I didn't know there were not many writing in the same style! I think that if I were to it would be easier than it would be for characters with less information to go off of, granted, I haven't tried it

I think third person limited has the potential to be either almost as intimate as a good quality first person fic, or it can flatten the characters just as a badly written third person omniscient would, depending on the writing. Like if you put two similar characters in the same situation, in third person (if written with none of the characters voice in it) they could be described as seeing and feeling all the same things, but in first person they'd likely describe it differently. I also just find it easier when I can describe things around the character as detailed as I want without having to question whether they'd actually describe it like that, or the dramatic irony of the reader seeing important things that the character hasn't picked up on, if that makes sense.

That said, I feel like writing first person in a generic writing style is more of a glaring flaw when it doesn't suit the character. So like, the quality of third person can range from amazing to kinda bad but at least passable, and the quality of first person can range from amazing to WTF IS THAT EVEN THE SAME CHARACTER MY BLORBO WOULD NEVER SOUND LIKE THAT. And the fear of getting them that wrong may be part of what holds people back from trying

All of which is to say I agree that it's more of a writing style problem than the pov itself

Been thinking lately about the Fanfic Writing Style(TM) and how incredibly restrictive it is because any deviation from a fairly paint-by-numbers third person POV tends to be wildly alienating to the average fanfic reader, and will actively be avoided.

This is especially obvious when you look at how first person POV fics are treated; they are automatically associated with bad quality, and people will immediately turn away from a fanfic the moment they see it's written in first person. There are reasons for this; firstly, it is true that beginning writers will often use first person because it feels a little more accessible than the other options, and most beginning writers are of course not very good yet on a technical level, especially not if they are also children, which many fanfic writers are. So the association between first person and bad quality is not entirely baseless (though, y'know. definitely at least a little mean spirited, if unintentionally so). Secondly, and this is a personal sentiment but one I've seen some people echo: first person can read weird when combined with fanfic, because fanfic often does not benefit from a closer connection with the POV character. We are here to watch blorbo do thing, it can feel a little weird when it is instead I doing the thing, y'know? This is personal preference, of course; no accounting for that.

However, regardless of the reasons, kneejerk avoidance of first person POV fics is probably one of the driving factors behind the homogenization of the fanfic writing style. It's difficult to put into words to me, but especially if you read a lot of fanfic, at some point it's obvious that most of these stories are written in the exact same way, with the same sentence structure, cadence, and metaphors. The often-mocked italicized Oh, usually used in its own paragraph, usually used in a romantic context, is an example of this: a writing quirk turned universal enough specifically in fanfic to be singled out and ridiculed for its frequency.

This style isn't inherently bad, many authors pull it off very well, but it's certainly restricting. Essentially banning the usage of the first person POV alone is already severely limiting, but even just a slightly different usage of the third person POV is discouraged if everyone is writing the exact same way.

This leads to an overarching problem in fandom, namely that all characters tend to sound the same. The style of writing is the same whether writing about a jaded 40-year-old man or a peppy 12-year-old girl. A story set in 1940's France will have more or less the same writing as a story set in 2010's America. Writers do often try to add little details to their narration to distinguish different characters, and success with this varies, but is usually limited. Narration in fandom is rarely personalized to the character, and instead falls into the homogenized fandom style more than anything else.

I don't have a specific goal with this post. I'm not necessarily saying 'we need to STOP big fandom's writing style' or whatever, I don't think that's productive or feasible. I do think that we should all, as readers, be a little more open to stuff like first person POV fics or stranger prose experiments rather than skipping over or closing out of a fic as soon as we encounter them, and as authors (if you actually care about improving your writing) I'm encouraging you to take a look at the prose style used in your fanfic and see if you could diversify it because oftentimes readers do respond positively when they see it, so I guess if there's anything to take away from this post as a call to action, it's that. But mostly this is just me musing on something I've noticed in my own fanworks recently that irritates me.

[graysanatimony]

So today I was reading a book and SOMEHOW my fucking dumbass managed to read the name “Collin” as Bojan… THEY ARE NOTHING ALIKE HOW DID I MANAGE THAT

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I have learnt things about Geto that I wish I could unlearn

[ghostly-cabbage]

I have officially edited and updated my DP fic recommendation document

I've so far only used it for friends but now I'm wondering if any of you guys would be interested...

[totaldramafan-lauri]

Make Use Of Me (chapter 1, preview)

Dec. 7 EDIT: ONCE MORE, WITH BRAVERY THIS TIME. No more chickening out. You can read this thing FOR REAL now. Sorry for being weird, and now....sorry if this wasn't worth it. XD

O-OK...here goes....

First thing's first: I am not expecting a lotta people to read this. I'm not asking people to read this. At this point, I'm making this mostly as a passion project, and if anyone enjoys it, it'll be a really cool bonus. My writing style isn't gonna be for everyone, and the characters I write aren't the most....popular characters in the CRK X Reader community, and I imagine this isn't really something a lotta fans'll be demanding more of.

This is LONG. This one chapter is 56 pages long. I am a VERY wordy writer,

So......why'm I posting this preview? Well....partially as an interest gauge for people who WOULD wanna read it, but...mostly as a motivator. As something to remind myself of whenever I get lazy. After all....I can't quit after I made the first chapter public, right? By doing that, I put myself out there...And, hey, I even tagged it, so, if by the off chance, someone did read it, I'm basically promising them more eventually.....

But, again, I'm not forcing anyone to read this.

Not only is it long, but.....This first chapter is probably my least-favorite thing I've ever written. By posting this chapter by itself, I'm testing to see if it does its job of making people wanna read the rest, cuz....right now, I'm not so sure how well it succeeds at that.....

This is the boring part of the story. It's a bunch of setup, and me jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop to just get everything started. I know setup is important and all, but....I'm already a very wordy writer, so....oof....There is some interesting stuff that happens, but it takes a while to get there.

I-I....kinda hate it, actually. The only reason I didn't scrap it is that I didn't realize I hated it until I was about halfway through it and the "good part" hadn't started yet. And I still spent a month writing the thing, so....I finished it.

I'm tagging this...as an experiment. If you wanna read this, go ahead. W-well, read my tags first, THEN go ahead. XD

All I can really say in this chapter's defense is that....I do try my best to salvage it. It's just setup, but I TRIED to make it interesting. And everything that seems like it didn't go anywhere, will later. This isn't the whole story, it's just the beginning of what's gonna be a BIG story. Anything that seems weird in this chapter, gets explored in the other chapters. This does set up a bunch of stuff that becomes important later (The friend character shows up later, the Colosseum becomes relevant later). This chapter is boring, but I tried not to make any of it pointless.

For the future: I'm aiming for five chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 will be a series of smaller vignettes that take place over the course of a few years, chapter 4 will be the climax, and chapter 5 will be something of an epilogue. After that, there will be two endings to choose from (which will make sense when we get there).

This probably won't be my favorite thing I've ever written, but it will be the most ambitious thing I've ever, and probably will ever, write. I haven't written something like this before, and it's all to flesh out this story and make it believable.

Right now, I.....I want to finish this. I'll probably still be writing this in February at the rate I'm going, but...at this point, I've put too much into it to give up on it. However, I'm STILL not completely ruling out the idea of my motivation dying before then. It COULD happen. So, what I'm planning to do is...setting a short-term goal of finishing chapter 3. After I do that, I'll post the first three chapters on AO3 together, and work on the rest. That way, even if I don't finish it, I'll at least have it over half done, and chapter 3 will end on a somewhat high note.

So, yyyyeah....Not a lotta people will read this preview. Overly wordy writing style + boring setup part of story + 56 pages long + assumed lack of interest for X Readers of this character (At least, I haven't SEEN many simps for her, m-maybe I'm wrong, I might be, I-I haven't checked any tags cuz I've been nervous, b-but it doesn't make my writing any better. In that case, this is my first time writing her so I'm trying super hard to do her justice >//////<)

I-if you wanna read this, and see if this first chapter does a good job of making you wanna read the better chapters, then...Go ahead.....

Some notes:

-This is still not the final draft. It's finalized enough for me to share, but I'm still not considering it finished. Even tho I'm working on chapter 3 right now, I STILL go back and edit this, even very recently. So, chances are, even if the story is finalized, small details and sentences are still subject to change. I know for a fact that there are still SOME placeholder bits in here that will change after I get some stuff cleared up. Recently, I even considered chopping off an entire section to make it shorter. I decided not to, but hey, it could still happen. I don't wanna waste anyone's time. The first chapter of a story, even if it's boring, is still very important, and I wanna make sure it's the best version of itself.

(A-and yes, this means that I've finished chapter 2 as well. The reason I'm not sharing it is that, unlike chapter 1, it was finished VERY recently, so I might still need to give myself time to edit it. From what I have, tho, I do like it a LOT more than chapter 1. There are some parts of chapter 2 that I'm legit proud of.)

-Even tho this first chapter is completely clean, I-I should mention that....this fic is for adults. The full version, at least. Chapters 3 and 4 are gonna contain some light N/S/F/W moments (the "fade to black" variety, so nothing explicit) and there'll be other slightly racey comments here and there. Just a heads-up. I'm gonna be uncomfy with minors reading this.

Th-that's all? I-I think that's all.......O-OK, so......h-here goes..... E-enjoy....

[edwinisms]

so damn close to finishing writing my first fic for this show but my head feels like it’s gonna explode from writing an entire 3.3K theoretical analysis paper for like five hours straight and if I look at my computer screen much longer I might just fucking die so. here we are. suffering.

[dennisboobs]

do you guys ever sit and remember that dennis takes a mental health day is an episode that exists

[starlooove]

I rlly liked red hood the hill bc besides the gift it completely ignored everything else with the batfam which to meeee I’m taking it as the hill has been overlooked by the bats forever (see Orpheus rising) so yeah nobody there gives a fuck about those people and jason knows better than to bring that shit over there

[llycaons]

i think you might just need to go outside

you're the one who sent three anonymous messages to a stranger on the internet about a reddit sub full of ao3 fans about something she posted two years ago anon so idk maybe I'm not the one who needs to log off

[hopepetal]

Reminding everyone that reblogs are better than likes

Especially on tumblr